If you’re careful in selecting the right project for your sprint, and you avoid some of the above traps, design sprints are a great way to solve 80% of the problem in a short amount of time. However the time and effort comes from designing the last 20%. It’s best not to see design sprints as some magic shortcut that can collapse the fabric of space and time, but as an efficient design approach to solve the bulk of the problem at an early stage, when the risks are at their lowest.

One of the things I most often complain about when it comes to UI’s is the thin type. We all know that text must be legible, but even top designers use thin type, which leaves me puzzled. Here’s an example.

A capture of one of the intro screens of the Facebook Pages Manager app. What on earth is the ultra thin Helvetica doing there?

This is one of the intro screens of the Facebook Pages Manager app – why use the ultra thin variant of Helvetica? It makes no sense, especially since this is a mobile app – just think about the screen rendering and light reflection issues. With the close button and the number 3 in the messages icon being oddly placed, I’d assume it’s all a result of not paying enough attention to the little big details. Whether you’re dealing with a mobile UI or a web UI, using thin type is not something I would recommend.

This is how the folks in a hospital in Zagreb took care of the customer experience of a ticket machine.

A ticket machine in one of Zagreb’s hospitals.

I just had to take this pic and share it. Notice how they used the band-aids and inserted a sheet that points to the button they want you to press. The sign reads pritisnuti lagano broj, which translates to press the number gently.